Previously, we talked about understanding how modern buyer behavior has changed in recent years and what steps you can take to address those changes in your sales process. If you follow the steps in that article, you’ll effectively disrupt the preconceived notions of a buyer who thinks they know it all based on their limited research. You’ll also convince them to tune in to what you have to say.
But once you have their attention and they’re primed for direct engagement, then what? Much like their behavior, their expectations around the buyer experience have also changed. You’ll have to impress them in multiple areas.
How do you accomplish this? Keep reading to see how you can create a showstopping buyer experience that closes the sale.
Check out the full webinar on this topic, which includes additional insights. It features myself and Ron D’Andrea, COO of Global Performance Group.
The Impact Of Creating A Showstopping Buyer Experience
Remember that every buyer will have three key questions your sales team should be poised to answer:
- How exactly are you going to solve their problem?
- What is the cost of your solution?
- Why should they buy from you specifically?
The experience we provide buyers when they’re evaluating us as vendors must build anticipation of what they’re purchasing.
For example, consider a multi-million dollar deal I closed back in 2017 with a Fortune 500 company.
My company created software and the typical sales cycle was about six months. The buyer has a procurement team, and we responded to their RFP with a variety of sales materials and marketing collateral.
We had automated most of these resources and personalized them for the buyer. After the deal was signed, I interviewed the buyer—something I recommend every seller do whether you win or lose the deal, as it can be quite insightful.
In asking why the buyer chose to work with us over the competition, here was the point person’s response:
“Everything you sent us—from the video, brochure, and sales presentation to the proposal—was perfect. We couldn’t find a single typo. The quality, design, and responsiveness were head and shoulders above your competitors, and it showed how much you cared about us. That experience is what gave us an idea of what it was going to be like to work with you.” [emphasis added!]
Notice that the buyer didn’t mention anything about our product—nothing about how it had impressive or unique features, or how it did things the competing products couldn’t. She also didn’t bring up price—that maybe our quote had the lowest cost or the greatest overall value for the price point.
What really impressed her was the buyer experience we cultivated. Through that experience, she was able to learn about our people, culture, and processes. She and the rest of her team anticipated being successful with us simply because of the experience they had, and that’s why they chose us.
What A Show-stopping Buyer Experience Looks Like
Gartner research indicates that buyers only spend about 17% of their time meeting with potential suppliers when considering a purchase. So how do you create a buyer experience that impresses your potential customers in that limited time, and compels them to choose you like the Fortune 500 company did with my former employer?
You must make learning about your company and what it can offer as frictionless and flawless as possible. Buyers will primarily learn what they need to know from your proposal.
This document must not only be pristine but delivered quickly. Every day you take to provide the buyer with a formal proposal is another day they can choose a competitor who’s already given them what they need to make a decision.
Data from a 2022 survey we conducted with sales leaders from 400 companies—200 Fortune 1000 enterprises and 200 small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs)—indicates that buyers are typically not willing to wait for your team to produce a proposal. A surprising 39% of enterprises and 47% of SMBs say they’ve lost a deal because it took too long to send out a sales proposal.
How do you deliver an error-free proposal without spending too much time?
Use a proposal automation solution like Talewind, which gives you the tools to create stunning digital showrooms tailored to the needs of each of your buyers.
See below for the key aspects that underpin a great buyer experience—each of which can be achieved with Talewind.
Give buyers that “wow” factor.
In our survey, more than 80% of sales leaders at enterprises and SMBs agree that creating sales content that has an outstanding look and feel is a key factor for winning new business.
What better way to accomplish this than modifying the look and feel of the showroom to match your buyer’s branding—everything from the colors and logo to font choice. Giving buyers access to a digital environment they’re familiar with is the perfect way to make them feel comfortable and enable them to better connect with your sales content.
Give prospects immediate, convenient access to your most helpful resources.
The typical buyer experience includes receiving a slew of emails from your sales team—a brochure here, a sales deck there, an answer to a question from the sales call, and so on.
In Talewind, you build one digital showroom that includes all the resources necessary to convince the buyer to say yes. Add your proposal, quotes, sales decks, videos, and more to your showroom at any time.
The entire buying committee can also view the proposal on any device. Not only can they view all the resources you’ve made available, but they can also annotate these materials in a sidebar. Annotations come in handy when there are multiple parties on the buyer side of the table. They’re also useful if the seller has questions for your team—you can simply provide an in-line response.
Get proposals out the door faster.
Instead of spending 15 hours per week—the average time sales leaders in our survey say they spend drafting sales content—your team can typically reduce that time to less than an hour.
How?
Rather than going the usual route of opening a Word document and drafting and editing content, we templatize all your documents. Then we build web forms with dynamic placeholders for swapping out variable content in those documents automatically.
All you need to do is fill out a form, and Talewind builds your proposal in seconds.
Talewind also has a built-in approval workflow that automatically routes completed proposals to designated parties for signoff. So if your sales manager and a member of your senior management team need to sign off on proposals before sharing them with clients, you can streamline this approval process.
Make accurate claims and avoid human error.
Accuracy is incredibly important in proposals. Even with great attention to detail, sellers are bound to introduce errors or forget to change paragraphs when creating and copying over content. Since sellers only have to fill out a prebuilt form to populate the proposal, they can avoid the inaccuracies and grammatical mistakes that often plague the proposal creation process.
A killer buying experience doesn’t have just one look and feel—there are many ways to impress prospects. But why go through trial and error when you can turn to one solution that’s already proven to be a showstopper? Use Talewind, your one-stop shop for buyers to learn about and engage with your business. See how our solution can help you win more deals with its automated digital showrooms.
